Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Oh, Donut Bar... I had such high hopes for you. I hoped you would deliver something on the same level as Dynamo Donuts in San Francisco, or Doughnut Plant in New York City... but alas... On my first trip, I will admit I might not have picked a very good day to visit. Every single doughnut offered was brown. There were creme brulee ones filled with pastry cream, chocolate and maple with bacon, chocolate cake doughnuts and apple fritters. You can see the full selection above. The creme brulee was interesting because of the hard crunchy caramelized sugar top but the pastry cream inside didn't taste like creme brulee.Maple bacon is a stellar flavor combination but the flaccid pieces of bacon draped over the top of these doughnuts were anything but appetizing - not to mention hard to eat. (Great Maple is killing these, by the way.)
The rest of the doughnuts I tried that day were no better than anything you'd find in an ordinary doughnut shop.
On a second visit, I tried the blood orange, the "birthday cake" and a peanut butter and jelly bar. The blood orange was by far the best, with good strong citrus flavor in the glaze and a fluffy tender texture. I'm not crazy about the thick glaze they put on their old fashioned doughnuts, but the doughnut itself was fine. The "birthday cake" flavor was plain a vanilla cake doughnut with colored sprinkles. The peanut butter frosting was pleasingly salty, but I was chagrined to find it was with artificially flavored and colored bulk quality "jelly." If you're going to charge $3. for a doughnut, I just think you should do better than that.

Great things in life don't always start the way you want them to, Seinfeld was not a very funny show when it first started, Einstein made many mistakes when coming up with the theory of relativity, and The Donut Bar didn't get off to the best start, but the times they are a changin'. The Donut Bar got all the wrinkles out and they are putting out a 5 star quality donut now. I challenge all of you to go to back to The Donut Bar and give your taste buds a treat.